Houdini

This is our llama, Houdini. Everybody say "Hi, Houdini!" He loves that. ok, that is not true. So far, the only things that I know Houdini loves are his llama treats. He does not seem to love me, or anyone else in the family, for that matter. He is very interested in the children, especially if they are jumping on the trampoline and making lots of noise.

So, why have this aloof creature? Well, this past Spring, we had coyotes invade our land and eat many of our sheep. Although Jeff purchased a shot gun (and even shot one of the coyotes!), we penned in the sheep and goats at night, and we cleared out most of the brush so that the coyotes could not hide...the wiley pooches were still managing to get our sheep. We had an expert coyote trapper/sniper recommended to us by the WA Fish and Game Department, and he came out to our house and told us what he could do...but it was mainly setting up traps and we felt the dangers that those posed to the neighbor cats and dogs (not to mention our own, not too bright, domestic critters) were too much of a risk. Soooo...this is the part where Houdini comes in...we looked into this thing called "llama protection". You can read more about it on the web, there are both pro and con articles about this use of llamas. So far, our llama seems to be detering the coyotes. We did have one of our sheep killed a few days after we got Houdini, but he had not "bonded" with the herd yet, so perhaps he was just too far away from them when the coyotes attacked. That was back at the beginning of June and we have not had any more deaths.

And that is the story of why we have a llama. Oh yes, and also because he is funny looking and makes us laugh.